Sarah Vowell thinks of Hawaii as the most American state. She argues that it's "breathtaking in its beauty, sometimes hideously developed, overwhelmingly religious, impoverished (except for pockets of staggering wealth), crass and spiritual all at once." In Unfamiliar Fishes, she will explore the exceptional history of Hawaii with her personal reporting and trademark smart-aleckiness to find out the odd and emblematic history of Hawaii, and...

This book, telling the story of westward expansion in the words of the people who lived it, presents seventeen full or excerpted documents that provide a wide range of perspectives on this period in history.

Explores the Lousiana Purchase and the changes it led to. Authoritative text, colorful illustrations, illuminating sidebars.

The romantic myth of America's frontier that many people encounter in the media is only part of the story of the nation's expansion in the nineteenth century. This book illustrates the push by European settlers and the federal government ever westward, and its effects on indigenous peoples. Through primary source historical images and the tragic narrative of broken treaties, relocations, and armed conflict, it brings the inspiring resistance and fight...

The rise and fall of ancient Rome has been on American minds from the beginning of our republic. Today we focus less on the Roman Republic than on the empire that took its place. Depending on who's doing the talking, the history of Rome serves as either a triumphal call to action or a dire warning of imminent collapse. In Are We Rome? the esteemed editor and author Cullen Murphy reveals a wide array of similarities between the two empires: the blinkered,...

New York Times Bestseller! Jefferson's Great Gamble tells the incredible story of how four leaders of an upstart nation--Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Livingston--risked the future of their country and their own careers; outwitted Napoleon Bonaparte, the world's most powerful ruler; and secured a new future for the United States of America. For two years before the Louisiana Purchase, the nine principal players in the deal watched France and the...

"The explosive true saga of the legendary figure, Daniel Boone, and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two bestselling authors at the height of their writing power--Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. It is the mid-eighteenth century, and in the 13 colonies founded by Great Britain, anxious colonists desperate to conquer and settle North America's "First Frontier" beyond the Appalachian Mountains engage in a never-ending series of bloody battles....